On Memorial Day, Grieving in Private

By SARAH LYALL

Published: May 31, 1988

Len Schwende put on his United States Army uniform, the one he wore when he was an artilleryman in Vietnam 16 years ago, and joined a gathering yesterday in Lower Manhattan that was far removed from the official Memorial Day ceremonies around the city.

''This means more than the parade,'' said Mr. Schwende, of Brooklyn. ''I'd rather just hang out here. We don't need any more parades.''

For many, Memorial Day means the official start of summer, the beginning of barbecues and beach activities, of hazy days and sultry nights. For the several dozen veterans who came to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 55 Water Street yesterday, it meant a chance to grieve and reminisce, long after a war that some said was the most significant event in their lives.

Several said it was only recently -with the help of the three-year-old memorial, etched with excerpts from soldiers' letters - that they had begun to resolve their feelings about the war and find their place in a society where many had repudiated it. Years of Nightmares and Guilt

Ralph Pasqualicchio, a 41-year-old veteran from Astoria, Queens, said: ''I think about this place every day. It's a gathering place for us.''

Edward Santiago, 42, of Manhattan, who spent two years in Vietnam, said: ''When I came back from Vietnam, I threw my Marine uniform and my medals into the river. I used to go by myself on Memorial Day to the East River and think about the war.''

But now, Mr. Santiago said, after years of nightmares and guilt, years in which he shunned other veterans because the memories were too painful, he is able to confront the past and to spend Memorial Day at the monument.

''You used to have to keep your feelings inside; you had nobody to go to,'' he said, and he began to cry. ''Now I meet these guys here, and we can talk.'' Tourists Out in Full Force

It was a modest gathering, sandwiched between two high-rise office buildings. Few people who were not veterans stopped by. Those who did sometimes left a bouquet of roses or a memento in the form of a letter or a piece of clothing.

The sparseness of the gathering was reflected throughout the city, where most people treated Memorial Day as part of a long holiday weekend.

In Battery Park, the gateway to the Statue of Liberty, tourists were in full force. They held their tourist accouterments - plastic foam Statue of Liberty headdresses, subway maps, cups of dairy-free soft ice cream - and swarmed about, eating and snapping pictures. Newton Grant and his one-man band played military airs. Vendors sold fuzzy American eagles, smaller than the palm of your hand, and reported that sales of the American flag were up yesterday. Parade Draws Fewer Than 2,000

Elsewhere, fewer than 2,000 people, by police estimates, showed up to watch the American Legion Parade on the Upper West Side. Only several hundred marchers took part in the parade, which closed with a ceremony at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on 89th Street and Riverside Drive.

A 6,000-person parade in western Long Island that curved into parts of Queens drew a crowd estimated at 40,000 along its winding path, however.

At the East Coast War Memorial, eight upright stone slabs that line a path into the water at Battery Park, visitors barely stopped to look while a lone man read the names of men lost at sea in World War II.

''I served two and a half years in the Pacific,'' said the man, Dirck Vreeland, 63, moving slowly through the monument. ''I lost a lot of friends, and I like to spend the day here thinking of them.''

''I think it's unfortunate that this day has been commercialized,'' continued Mr. Vreeland, a lawyer who lives in Manhattan. ''There's a lack of remembrance and a lack of thinking about this country, and it would do a lot of people good to think about it.''

He looked at the names on one slab and added, sadly: ''My brother's best friend never came back. Eddie Occumpaugh. That's why I look at this; I think of Eddie. He's still down there somewhere.''